Choose Yourself

by James Altucher

Success by itself won’t bring you happiness, because you can’t do any of this from a position of ill health. If your body is sick, if you are around negative people who bring you down, if your idea muscle has not been refined into the perfect machine, and if spiritually you haven’t developed a sense of gratitude and surrender, you will have less chances of success in the new Choose Yourself era.

choose yourself...buhild yoirself nd it will grow

In this new era, you have two choices: become a temp staffer (not a horrible choice) or become an artist-entrepreneur. Choose to commoditize your labor or choose yourself to be a creator, an innovator, an artist, an investor, a marketer, and an entrepreneur.

Sell yourself or prioritize creating and becoming

Rejection—and the fear of rejection—is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves.

Rejection the fear of it..worse thing to choosing self

Try this exercise: Think for a second of ten different times you’ve been rejected. Were you rejected for a job? Did you have a novel rejected? Did a potential girlfriend/boyfriend reject you? List ten. Now think about this: how easy would it be to list one hundred? I can probably list one thousand.

The phrase financial freedom includes the word financial but it also includes the word freedom: freedom to explore the blessings that surround us.

You need to build a positive base: physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

A very simple test was done by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram. He took ten students and sent them on the New York City subway system.

People listen and respond go beyond comfort and fear

Here’s an exercise for those who typically wake up anxious and paranoid at three in the morning: instead of counting sheep to get back to sleep, count all the things you are grateful for. Even the negative parts of your life. Figure out why you should be grateful for them. Try to get up to one hundred.

so I assumed that the money was in the bank without ever looking for other opportunities. Big mistake. When you give up searching for frontiers, inevitably you end up stuck in a swamp, sinking deeper into the mud the more you struggle to get out.

Always ask yourself, what can I improve? Who else can I talk to? Where else can I look?

Key

ONLY DO THINGS YOU ENJOY.

Step 1 in choosing yourself

Every time you say yes to something you don’t want, your fire starts to go away. You will get burned out.

Imagine now you have three other bodies alongside your physical body: an emotional body a mental body and a spiritual body.

Finally, I just started saying over and over again, ‘I love myself.’”

Kamal then wrote about his experience in the now-successful book, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It: And I got better. My body started healing faster. My state of mind grew lighter. But the thing I never expected or imagined, life got better. But not just better, things happened that were fantastically out of my reach. This I couldn’t have dreamed of […] I found myself using the word ‘magic’ to describe what was happening. And through it all I kept repeating to myself, ‘I love myself. I love myself. I love myself.’

CREATESPACE. Both Kamal and I used CreateSpace because they are owned by Amazon—where we were going to sell our books—and have excellent customer service.

Kamal did his all himself. I did my first book by myself, as well. But for my second book, for a small fee, I hired someone (Alexanderbecker.net) to format the book, create the book design, and create the final PDF, which I uploaded.

The chicken was great and people loved it but he didn’t start making real money until he started franchising at the age of sixty-five. That’s the age he was when he found his “purpose“ in life.

age 65 kfc franchise

People fool themselves into thinking that the currency of unhappiness will buy them happiness. That we have to “pay our dues,” go on some sort of ride, and then get dropped off at a big location called our “purpose,” where now we can be happy.

Forget purpose. It’s okay to be happy without one. The quest for a single purpose has ruined many lives.

you can live a life of unexpected surprise. Where every day is an adventure. And every time you look in the mirror, a new person is there.

To disappear and lose your identity

BE ARTISTIC. Being an entrepreneur means you’re going to create something in a way that a customer can’t get anywhere else.

The reality is there’s no such thing as competition. The world is big enough for two people in the same space.

There are no competetors

Only free time, imagination, creativity, and an ability to disappear will help you deliver value that nobody ever delivered before in the history of mankind.

Exercise: think of two people in your network who don’t know each other but you think can add value to each other’s lives. Introduce them. Do this every day. Get better and better at it. The more value you bring to the people in your network (even if it doesn’t directly bring value to you in an immediate way), the greater the value of your network. And then the greater value you will have.

Abundance only comes when you are moving along your themes. When you are truly enhancing the lives of the people around you.

Blogging is not about money. Blogging is about trust. You don’t sell ads on your blog (rarely), you don’t get the big book deal (rarely), but you do build trust and this leads to opportunities. My own blog has made me a total of zero cents but has created millions in opportunities.

The way you get back to basics is by doing your Daily Practice and focusing on the Four Bodies (do one from each, every day):

The Physical Body: Am I eating well? Am I exercising? Am I flossing? Am I sleeping enough?

The Emotional Body: Am I surrounding myself with people who love me? Am I not engaging with the people who put me down, even if they are co-workers? Am I not gossiping?

The Mental Body: People have lots of ideas, but they are mostly bad ones. The way you get good ideas is to do two things: 1) Read two hours a day. 2) Write ten ideas a day.

Read two hours write ten ideas

The Spiritual Body:

All you have to do is stay in the present. When you catch yourself upset about the past or worried about the future, say to yourself, “Ah, I’m time traveling,”

Good for her. Don’t be a hater! Ninety-nine percent of people are haters. Bless that which you want.

TEN KEYS TO SELLING: What’s the lifetime value of the customer?

The idea muscle must be exercised every day. Even if you’ve come up with ideas every day of your life, it will atrophy if you give it a two-week rest.

Need to use idea muscle every day

As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you can’t—either way you are right.”

Every day, read/skim chapters from books on at least four different topics.

Idea machine crancking

Write down ten ideas. About anything. It doesn’t matter if they are business ideas, book ideas, ideas for surprising your spouse in bed, ideas for what you should do if you are arrested for shoplifting, ideas for how to make a better tennis racquet, anything you want. The key is that it has to be ten or more. You want your brain to sweat,

Right now, list ten ideas that are “too big for me” and what the next steps might be.

An exercise to get your subconscious working on an idea: Write down your routine. Make it as detailed as possible. What can you change today? How can you change it?

The vagus nerve stretches from your brain to your stomach and hits every organ along the way (almost). It gets inflamed when your cortisol levels are too high for too long. The vagus nerve basically causes every disease known to mankind. High stress inflames it, as does bad food, smoking, etc. You get the drift.

Chill out

Subtraction, and not addition, is what makes the window to the brain more clear, wipes away the smudges, and opens the drapes.

Being smarter

Brene Brown has written an excellent book called The Gift of Imperfection, but I’ll summarize it here: perfectionism is sometimes the most dangerous set of thoughts you can let make their home in your head.

And your brain is heavy. It rests on your shoulders. When stuff is weighing it down you lose about 10 to 20 percent of your intelligence. Give up control and get smarter.

Quit trying to control and perfect things

“abundance complex.” And I firmly believe abundance follows an abundance complex. So I’m smarter (and wealthier) when I give up that scarcity complex.

no matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter who your audience is: 30 percent will love it, 30 percent will hate it, and 30 percent won’t care. Stick with the people who love you and don’t spend a single second on the rest.

30 percenters

It is through silence that sound, activity, and action erupts. It was through nothingness that the Big Bang and all creation erupted. It is only through contemplation that the hidden shades of reality can be seen and right action can be taken.

Silence is the creative force

Try this exercise: pretend everyone was sent to this planet to teach you. Famous people, dead people, your neighbors, your relatives, your co-workers. This will give you a strong feeling of humility. And guess what, you will learn from people, you will appreciate them more, and they will actually appreciate you more. Because everyone loves to teach.

you would think Woody Allen works around the clock. In a 1980 interview, “If you work only three to five hours a day you become very productive. It’s the steadiness of it that counts. Getting to the typewriter every day is what makes productivity.”